Greetings people who care about me and my well being!
I realized I have given you a lot of updates about working at CFY, but haven't talked about house life yet. Sorry it's taken me so long to do so!
If you are interested in exploring the house website, take a look: http://www.mennohouse.org/
Menno House is a four story brownstone in Gramercy Park in Manhattan. It's located a few blocks from the subway, and Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship, the owner of the house, meets at the Quaker Meetinghouse located a few blocks away. The church shares an office with the Menno House manager here.
The first floor is a common living space with a living room, dining room, and kitchen. The residents take turns keeping it clean...we've wowed previous visitors with our cleanliness! Believe me, it's hard to keep a space clean with ten residents, and six guests on any given night!
The second floor is the office and three guest rooms. We have guests come stay with us from all over the world. Recently, I met guests from Sweden, Germany and Australia. Living in a hospitality house definitely makes life interesting! We had three sisters stay awhile ago. They arrived a blond, and two brunettes. They left all blond. One Sunday morning while they were here, we looked out into our patio (yes, we have a patio) and we saw them dying each other's hair. We're glad they didn't get hair dye on the furniture! Later that same day, I was going upstairs to my room and overheard one sister say to the other, "Oh no! We forgot to get hair dye today!" The other sister said, "Oh that's right! I guess we can get it tomorrow." I'm not sure what else or who else they wanted to dye. Whatever!
The third and fourth floor are resident rooms. We currently have ten residents. Five are students studying social work, public health, law, theology and ordination, and psychology. The rest are volunteers like me. Katie, the other VSer is serving at Urban Justice Center. She works with New York City residents who are in debt crises. The other volunteers are at MCC's office at the UN.
We have residents from Texas, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Oregon, Canada, Kenya, Zimbabwe Michigan, and of course KANSAS! It's really fun to live with such a diverse group of people. All of my house mates are genuine people who want to be committed to living in community together and to do life together. Every week we have a soup night where the whole house comes together to share a meal. It's great to have a chance to check-in with people and share a meal together. Outside of soup night, Katie and I regularly eat together. Sometimes other housemates join us as they're around.
We also have a patio!!! That was the main selling point for me to come to New York. We have a couple picnic tables, a glider, and an herb garden. It's great for brunches and morning coffee! Although we haven't been able to enjoy as much recently. We just started the process of installing a new roof. The workers set up scaffolding in our back yard. As I'm writing this, the workers are coming in and out of the house commenting on my lunch and music choices. They've just started working here, and already they've seen me in my pajamas. Great.
Other than the construction, life at the Menno is a fun one. We're a great group of people, and we have a lot of fun together. Thank you for all your support to give me this life experience!
Hope all is well with you.
Blessings,
Allison
